This is the truth, and it's not just libs.

A friend of mine from college took on insane amounts of debt to complete his undergraduate degree. He recently completed graduate studies in a practical field, and makes something like $75-80k, so not quite six figures but also fairly good for a single guy. When he was fresh out of grad school he asked me to borrow $5k to buy furniture and chit like that. I told him to see a bank about the loan because I know he's terrible with money, and I'd never see that cash again. A year later, he hasn't paid back the bank (despite buying new hobby bullchit every day). I asked if he's making any headway with his student loans - he just laughed and said, "There's no way I'm ever paying those off!"

This type of attitude is the reason that people stay poor, and I find it extremely difficult to give a **** about their situation.

Yup, f*ck em. I didn't sign up for their loan. There are two responsible parties, the lender and the lendee. So fixing the issues lies in fixing the relationship between the two parties involved. Your insistence on shielding the involved parties from responsibility is unproductive and unethical.

Of course, the answer is simple, allow student to default on their loan just like any other loan.

No, giving away free **** to irresponsible people are why irresponsible people flock to him.

What's funny about this post is that I guarantee that your significant other needed to rely on others just to get out of her situation.

Any fast food worker with $30k worth of debt is going to be scraping by just to make the minimum payments, keep a roof over their head, and feed themselves day-to-day. A minimum wage job, or close to it, simply isn't enough to pay the bills these days. Your SO 100% needed help from other people, whether that was you, her family, friends, etc. either way she got help along the way. How was she feeding herself when she was making 3x student loan payments just to pay off the debt? Who was paying her electric bill? Heat? Her insurance? Her car payment? If you are going to claim that she was completely independent and paid for everything herself, you'd be a liar. It's simple math, really.

And, I bet you think she's at least somewhat smart, right? Yet you freely admit that she fell victim to the whole for-profit-useless-degree college scam.

One would think that having been close to it and experienced it personally, you'd at least understand how it can happen to others.

And how predatory would this lending be if.... say.... lendee could default on a loan that said lender knew was going to be "predatory"?
Yup... I feel bad for people that get fooled into making dumb decisions. So here.... have my condolences and sympathy because that's all you deserve.

At 9% interest, you could pay $750 per month for 11 years towards 100k of debt and still come out owing 100k. Taking out high interest debt is such a bad decision for student loans. It is unfortunate that sometimes you get smashed with an increase when you are already 2 or 3 years done with a program and you have too much invested already to do anything else but borrow it.

But 100k is extreme. That is some bad decision making usually.

The payments are way too high relative to the incremental increase in earnings when beginning employment. The payments needed to beat interest and principal over an 11 year period at 9% are $1,200/month assuming immediate employment out of school. The whole plan is not smart.

There's not enough focus placed on career selection and income expectations (much less loans and financing) in high school and college. I feel like most students find bits of info on their own.

High school seniors need to be taught how to explore different industries and to pay attention to the requisite tuition and salary prospects so they can know if it's practical. There's also plenty of jobs in unrelated industries that require ANY 4-year degree, and they need to be discussed so these students have a plan B.

And if you want to be an artist or content creator, college for that goal is about the most useless thing you can do. Just start making content immediately.

SHHhhhHHH, quiet, we can't hurt the lefty left snowflake feelings nowadays. Everyone must believe that they can become the new Hollywood celebrity, fashion designer, or a professional video game player. You go gurl!!! Follow your dreams!!!!

It's very nice that we're forced to pay taxes for 12 years of mandatory public school education, only for seniors to not know how to do basic math, or be able to distinguish between the reality and a fairy tale fantasy story. Fuking amazing.

My immediate priority when I got my first job was paying off my student debts for my utterly worthless "education", I lived in a tiny shoebox apartment close to the office and didn't have a car or eat out and it was paid off very quickly

But I also went to a non prestigious community college that didnt have an NFL sized football stadium or billion dollar buildings to pay for, typical of the uneducated Drumpfkins who don't get into the best schools

This feels like a thread fail.

We lived together, paid chit together. If she was forced on her own there's other options like living with roommates,not buying brand new cars, TVs, and iPhones every other year. You are right-its impossible to do it solo and with all the accoutrements of modern living. That's why you kill the debt first, and then buy all the stupid chit you want AFTER. I guarantee the people who can't in fact could if they created a plan. To live with parents for a while, hell go live in a van and knock it all out in a year, rent a room instead of an apartment, buy a beater instead of a new model year car, cook at he instead of going out every other fekkin day. You act like one is entitled to a perfect life when they obviously have not exercised any will power or brain power. Nobody is entitled to anything. We live cheap, I currently support us both (plus 2 kids) on one income here in CA. Requires brains and frugality, not some miracle. I understand how it happens, however one has to take ownership of the situation and figure out a way forward. Paying interest only is retarded. These people want their problem solved for them. I have no sympathy. Even credit card companies TELL you how much money you lose by doing that. It's simple math.

nope.

The ones that say "phuck'em" and let them suffer will suffer themselves when (in the lendee's desperation) vote in a guy like bernie. 15-20 years ago, bernie would have been as unlikely a presidential candidate as the guy with the boot on his head, instead he's polling in 2nd and 3rd place in battleground states.

college would be alot cheaper if:

it didnt take 4 freakin years to get a degree..someone studying finance or engineering doesnt need to take pointless art appreciation classes.
stop paying these professors so much money
more kids would actually go to community colleges

This is a good point as well. Being forced to take gen ed classes in college is retarded. That's what HS is for is to get you a baseline in many things. College should be about specialized training.

Ironically enough trade schools are what college should be, specialized post HS career training.

Okay, let's say in some alternate reality, Bernie somehow becomes president. He would just be a president, he wouldn't be some dictator, where he could snap his fingers and make things happen.

That would definitely help. I'm a little torn though, because I find a lot of value with interdisciplinary studies. The notion that someone who attended college will have a well-rounded base of knowledge from history to literature to philosophy. It also results in students discovering new hobbies and interests.

I absolutely despise the fact I have to take social justice classes though. Brb paying hundreds or thousands to be brainwashed about how bad us minorities have it.

They need to cap student loan amounts. Most these people should never have been allowed to take out the size of loans they did as a jobless 18/19 year old.

Unless you’re a 4.0 student who took all the advanced classes and is going for some high income field degree, you shouldn’t be allowed to take out more than $20k student loan. More people need to just accept that they don’t have the finances for a big school and need to go to a smaller uni or community college.


While I think these people were stupid and somewhat deserve their fate, there should be some sort of option that helps them rectify their past mistakes.

Instead of forgiving the loans or allowing bankruptcy, maybe allow them to take an option if they so choose that eliminates any future interest on the loan making it essentially 0% now, but choosing this results in a credit score hit like bankruptcy, and their credit score will continue to be hit until their loan is paid off.

That way the loan is not forgiven and it isn’t put on the tax payers, and it gives these people a way to actually pay off their loans, and banks will maybe be a little more responsible about who they give loans to.

College isn't supposed to be job training though. Gen ed is supposed to get you out of your comfort zone and expose you to things you wouldn't normally be around so you will be a better, more well rounded person capable of being a useful member of society. If you want job training, then that is a trade school. Nothing wrong with going the direct path of trade school but it really just trains you to do one thing and one thing only. College is supposed to prepare you to be successful at things other than your major.

At least that is my fantasy world for college. Luckily I went to school before profit over education and SJW nonsense became the norm. In today's world I'm not sure I'd want to deal with college.

Don't major in stupid chit, I'm paying off my loans asap by making sacrifices such as not buying furniture other than a mattress for my apartment, not eating out, etc.

The community college I go to actually has two tracks for trades. You get a cert or a AA degree. If you want the AA, you take the program courses (~40 units) plus gen ed classes (about 20-25 units worth), if you only want the cert, which has the exact same program classes as the degree minus the gen ed, you can go for that. Unfortunately it takes about the same amount of time for both since due to pre-req requirements you have to go in order and wait to take certain classes. Benefit tho is it's easier to work if you only want the cert.

This system makes more sense, and yet even still needs to be improved. If I were Dean I'd break A/C and refrigeration into blocks. I work at a huge beverage company and took some classes to become a refrigeration technician. Imagine my irritation when I look at the refrigeration certificate and notice crap like "Environmental sustainability and solar panels" and "Air Conditioning 100" or "Blueprint reading". Fukking what? On top of that no classes to work on specific machinery. Ice machines, reach in coolers, or any actual commercial refrigeration equipment. And this program gets money out the ass they struggle to spend! .

Engineering has a similar route. You can be a full fledged mechanical engineer, or an engineer tech. The tech one has fewer classes, the mech engineer has a lot more focus on design and theory. Both can be PEs tho. I'm not 100% certain how engineering works, but that's my understanding from my little research.

Be nice to have dentist techs, physician techs maybe on the general practitioner side considering we're running a shortage currently and debt required to finish a med program is fukkin out there ($200k+).

It is too bad that more colleges don't offer a kind of three year fast track that is none of the gen ed and just purely focused on whatever your degree is. While I seem to be one of the few people that enjoyed gen ed for the most part (got stoned with a lot of hippies I probably wouldn't have met otherwise), I can understand a lot of people don't want to mess with it. Should certainly be cheaper too.

1. Why are they borrowing so much?
2. Why haven't they been putting any money towards the principle?

I could run up 100k in credit card debt and then make minimum payments for a few years and complain about the debt not going down. Would anyone feel bad for me?

I would. Just not bad enough to believe you should be bailed out at taxpayer expense...

It sucks, I think a lot baby-boomers and some of the Gen X'ers sold the millennials on the idea that they have to go to college or university and were making a lot of false promises and what not. Loans being made so accessible under the guise that "now every child can afford a post-secondary education!" when in reality, later down the road they really can't afford to pay it off.

I think the average cost per year of college is around 10K per year so four years would amount to 40K that is if you stay at home. If you live in a dorm it'll probably be maybe closer to 70-80K? But realistically you should be working part-time throughout and full time in the summers if you can so you could probably knock off a good portion of that debt. Some majors are more demanding than others so I don't know.

But at 17-18 years old these kids really have no clue what they are getting into by signing these loans. They think they have unlimited money so they spend it on the latest and most expensive chit. They don't really learn much about how to take care of finances, compounded interest and specifically the dangers of taking out loans when they were in high school. A course like that should be mandatory in high school and should be emphasized.

Yeah, kids should be pursuing PHDs in gender studies but I don't think it's entirely their fault. I know has a guy coming out of high school I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. However that doesn't mean signing a loan for college. But they've been sold on what is a pipe dream for many. Unfortunately, they will have to bear the consequences of their actions + reality. At a certain point you can't blame the system but will need to do whatever you can to pay them off.

Graduate school just doesn't seem like a good return on investment for most fields. Which is a shame because I feel that we could always use more researchers, scientists, etc.

Make an adult decision you have to accept the adult responsibility.

College education should have never been allowed to grow at the rate it has. Tuition rates of growth should have been capped by state legislatures. The powers that be at universities knew that the federal government would just give students a blank check for any tuition increases, no questions asked. So they raised prices to the moon.
But capping increases would have never happened because all Boards of Regents and university presidents vote 90%+ liberal dem. So is any democrat politician going to tell them they can't raise tuition and run their textbook scams? Of course not. Someone has to pay for those 6-figure incomes and expense accounts they use at "conferences" to present "research" which their slave labor teaching assistants from China performed--all the while the same TAs are spying and sending info back to China.
So obviously the solution is "muh free college" says Bernie and Pocahontas, right? You think these same dem politicians won't just continue to write blank checks to these same universities And raise taxes on YOU every year to do so? LOL That's their voting base--they're not making them mad.
Another huge mess created by the mental disorder of liberalism.

Where are their parents/parent when they're signing these loans? Also, are parents not saving any money at all so their children can go to college?

Everyone I know that can't get out of debt also live like they are making 6 figures when they only clear 59k a year.

Heaven forbid you dont live in that brand new apartment building, eat out half your meals, spend double your food budget binge drinking on the weekends etc.

People rather appear to be in a good place financially (expensive/ fancy tastses) nice car. Rather than live below their means and set their future up to be financially secure.

I literally couldn't give two shyts about anyone and their student loans. Go to community college or trade school and don't take out the equivalent of a mortgage so you can brag about what school you went to. Literally everyone I know who complains about their student loans is a massive ******* soyboy or Jeanine Garafolo hipster lookalike. Maybe an entire generation needs to get wiped out financially to realize the idiocy of taking out a loan for $100k and being shocked you can't pay it back in a few years on a basket weaving degree.

Three part problem.

1. Illegals fill the jobs that don’t require a degree.

2. Education is a way to force inter generational transfer of wealth. This is an intention process.

3. Borrowers not understanding how compound interest works, minimum payments and how much effort repaying debt takes.